| With the rapid development of world economy, people’s living standards have experienced great improvement. So, there is a great demand for not only the food itself, but also the food’s functions, such as nutrition, health, and the convenience. Meanwhile, the beverage industry enjoys the fastest developing speed among all kinds of food industries. Statistically, the development condition of the beverage industry is one of the important signs which indicate the country’s living quality and its level of civilization. Over years, with the rapid and sound development, beverage has become the indispensible accessory food in the daily life. What is more, the tea industry has already been the green industry, which has the greatest developing potential in the international beverage market in the21st century, because the tea is green, healthy and natural.China is the cradle for the tea and has abundant tea resource. In the meantime, China is also one of the largest countries in tea production, trading volume and consuming demand. Anhui province, as one of the most important production base of tea in China, needs the development of tea industry, because the tea industry is an important economic crop and tea industry is of great importance to develop economy and offer job opportunities, Furthermore, Chinese tea market is almost saturated, while the international market will offer more opportunities. This is why I start researching the Anhui tea industry and its international competitiveness.What is more important, Anhui has a great potential for developing the tea industry. Since the Tang dynasty, Anhui had already produced all kinds of tea, like Shouzhou Huangya tea, Lu’an tea, Tianzhu tea and Jiu Hua Shang tea, and so on. Nowadays, the traditional and newly created teas have expended to100types, which has been classified into four categories:green, black, yellow and scented tea. Since2000, Anhui tea has gone through a new development period, and the tea has become one of the most important economic crops in Anhui province. Anhui has more than140 thousand hectares of tea garden area, and Anhui tea industry has advantageous in both history and resources, so it has bright prospects.Nowadays, although the gross tea production ranks the seventh place in China, its tea gross exportation lies at the third ranking, just following Zhejiang, Hunan provinces. During the process of developing, Anhui tea industry faces lots of challenges, like the green barriers. For example, the importing standards of tea products is dramatically increasing over recent years However, the tea exportation accounts for a great part of Anhui agriculture exportation, and has made great contribution to the development of Anhui economy. Under such circumstance, it is urgent for us to research whether Anhui tea industry has international competitiveness or not, what have hindered the development of international competitiveness for Anhui tea industry, and how to improve the international competitiveness of Anhui tea industry. These are the main targets of this paper, which will focus on firstly illustrating the current development state of Anhui tea industry and then moving on to analyze the international competitiveness. At last, the author will give some suggestions to help Anhui tea industry develop sustainably, and enter the international tea market fast and efficiently. This paper will fully include six chapters.The first section briefly introduces the research background and the significance of this study. So far, there exist lots of literatures related to the competitiveness and the international competitiveness, covering all kinds of respects and their study methods are becoming much more mature. However, few scholars focus on the international competitiveness of a particular area in China. Basing on the existing related literatures, this paper will assess on the international competitiveness of Anhui tea industry using the widely accepted study methods of international competitiveness, such as MS, RCA, TC and price.In the second chapter, the author gives a comprehensive illustration of the current developing situations from two aspects-----producing angle and exporting angle. First of all, the history of Anhui tea will be introduced briefly. And then, the current situation analysis will start from our country’s tea to the Anhui tea industry.For the producing aspect, the analysis covers the tea production and the distribution of the tea garden area; for the trading part, this paper focus on the gross trading volume and its proportion, the direction of tea exporting areas, exporting tea types, and the average tea exporting price. What is more, the illustration will be conducted from comparing Anhui tea industry with other important tea producing areas in China to make the demonstration more comprehensive and clear. At last, the characteristics of China and Anhui tea industry are explained.For China, the characteristics are as follows:(1) China has its own widest tea garden area and the highest amount of tea production in the world. After2002, both tea garden area and tea production in China have been increasing dramatically, at the rate of100%and170%respectively. Besides, the productivity of tea garden area also enjoys a stable increase ever since1985;(2) the tea industry has a broad distribution because of the vast land of China, so that you can find tea trees in almost every province in China except some cold and dry areas from northeastern and northwestern of China. The main tea producing areas gather around the central and the tail of the Yangzi River and at the southwestern of China, such as the Sichuan, Yunnan from southeastern; Hunan, Hubei and Anhui located in the central of China; Zhejiang, Fujian lied in the east of China; and Guangdong in south of China;(3) What is more, China is also one of the largest tea exporting countries, which is among the top three in both the gross exporting volume and the gross exporting value;(4) Although the average Chinese tea’s exporting price is very low, it is increasing year by year and surpassed that of India as the second highest price in2012;(5) Chinese tea exportation is dominated by green tea, for the output of the black and other kinds of tea is much lower than that of the green tea in China, which is the opposite of the world market demand that is largely occupied by the black tea; (6) After2007, China’s tea exportation concentration has been weaker and weaker, which reduces the danger of being influenced seriously by some of the countries market changes.For Anhui province, they are:(1) the weather, soil and the geographic features are good for the plantation of tea trees and its tea garden areas are located at both the northern and southern part of Yangzi River;(2) the production is the NO. seven but its exportation status is the third, after Zhejiang and Hunan provinces;(3) further, the productivity of the tea garden area is much lower than other provinces, for it has never passed over0.5ton per hectare, while70%of them have surpass1;(4) Its proportion over national exportation has increased from7.2%to10.6%. So, Anhui tea’s exportation is becoming more and more important;(5) its average exporting price is much lower;(6) Anhui tea industry also enjoys the features of China tea industry, such as the tea types and the exporting areas.In conclusion, the weather conditions, the geographic location, vast tea garden areas, and its lower exporting price are the advantages for Anhui tea industry’s development, but the low productivity and the tea types that are different from the world demand stay in the way of Anhui tea industry’s development.The third section will calculate and analyze the international competitiveness of Anhui tea industry with several widely accepted indexes, like the international market share, revealed comparative advantage index, trade index and the average exporting price. Here, the author chooses large tea producing provinces, like Zhejiang, Hunan, Yunnan, and so on, and several great tea producing countries, like Kenya, Sri Lanka, India, and Indonesia, as the comparing objects for analyzing the international competitiveness of Anhui tea industry.This part gets the finding that Anhui tea industry has a certain degree of the international competitiveness. Nevertheless, it still has the improving potential, for it has advantageous in the abundant natural resources. However, Anhui tea industry still faces lots of challenges in the process of exporting. Then, How to make full use of its advantageous and improving its international competitiveness? So, we should find the factors that decided the international competitiveness of Anhui tea industry.The fourth chapter will use Portor’s diamond model to analyze the decisive factors of the international competitiveness of Anhui tea industry deeply, from six aspects: the production factors, demand condition, related supporting industries, enterprise’ strategy, the government and opportunity. For the production factors, the geographic location, tea resources, production cost, tea price, and the history are the competing advantageous factors, while it also has the disadvantageous like small scales, low level of mechanization, research and development fund, and short of international brand. As for the demand condition, the increasing oversea demand improves the international competitiveness of Anhui tea industry, but they mainly need the black tea. Regarding the related and supporting industries, the penetration of the tea mechanizations and the development of package printing industry and the logistic industry are of great importance for the development of Anhui tea industry. Regarding the strategy and structure of a company, almost all tea companies improve their competitiveness from industrial organization, improving its quality and creating its own brand. Here, government is of great importance in improving the international competitiveness of Anhui tea industry in every time and everywhere.In the last but one chapter, from the above analysis, the author will offer several suggestions to improve the international competitiveness of Anhui tea industry, as well as its sustainable development.The suggestions are as follows:firstly, make full use of the advantageous resources to develop the ecological tea garden, and cultivate the professional people in planting, cultivating, and processing, setting up the basic foundations for developing the ecological tea garden. Secondly, adjust the structure of industrial organization by supporting the leading tea companies to improve the intensity of the tea garden areas, and to conduct the unified management for realizing the development of Anhui tea industry. Thirdly, support the leading tea companies, for the leading companies play leading driver of establishing the brand, increasing the image of the industry as a whole and only the leading tea companies who have the tremendous capital, advanced technologies and good reputation can have the ability to stand out in both inner and outside of China. Fourthly, conscientiously implement Food Safety Law and strictly supervise tea quality. In recent years, it is frequent that food safety incidents happen in the world, causing a trust crisis in consumers to the food safety. It is wise for us to reduce the pesticide residue and control the tea quality, so that the green barriers can not stay in the way of Anhui teas’exporting. At last, formulate an international brand and implement cultural promotion, to take the advantage of long and rich culture history, and make Anhui tea world wide popular. The last chapter will take a brief conclusion for this study. |
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